I was doing a truncated backup from a 500GB drive that was imaged off of a 2 TB.

I am not 100% clear on what you meant. Could be my lack of sleep recently.
Were you doing a truncated backup of a 500GB drive and the 500GB drive was made by copying the first 500GB of a 2TB drive onto it? Or was the original drive a 500GB drive and it was copied and expanded to a 2TB drive and you were doing a truncated back up that 2TB drive.

I am not sure how DvrBARS would act in the first scenario, that would be a Greg question, but in the first scenario there might be references to areas of the drive that does not exist. So when DvrBARS tries accessing that area it throws the exception.

__________________
"Delay is preferable to error" - Thomas Jefferson
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" - Sir Isaac Newton

I have done the first scenario in the past to create images that I did not have to repair premiere models with bad hard drives. (Before the development of DvrBARS) The resultant drive has to be powered up in the TiVo first and the TiVo will divorce the non-existent drive making a good image.

__________________
"Delay is preferable to error" - Thomas Jefferson
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" - Sir Isaac Newton

I don't know if that error is a M$ or a DvrBARS error. I assumed it was a DvrBARS error.

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Were you doing a truncated backup of a 500GB drive and the 500GB drive was made by copying the first 500GB of a 2TB drive onto it?

This 652 had a 2TB drive in it. It was purchased used.
I used MFS Live boot CD to image that drive to this 500GB drive (however it is done). I ten tried to copy that image to a file so I can free up that drive to use on another 652 that I'm having a problem with.

DvrBARS seem to be a solution to save a image as a file instead of wasting a hard drive to do the same, which is foolish.

I used a eSATA interface (cable) to attempt the process if that mattered, no USB anything.

I don't know if that error is a M$ or a DvrBARS error. I assumed it was a DvrBARS error.

This 652 had a 2TB drive in it. It was purchased used.
I used MFS Live boot CD to image that drive to this 500GB drive (however it is done). I ten tried to copy that image to a file so I can free up that drive to use on another 652 that I'm having a problem with.

DvrBARS seem to be a solution to save a image as a file instead of wasting a hard drive to do the same, which is foolish.

I used a eSATA interface (cable) to attempt the process if that mattered, no USB anything.

DvrBARS is popping up the error message, but since ReadFile is a Windows API call I just display the MS error code that it returns.

If you used MFS Live to make a truncated image to the 500GB drive, it still has pointers to the full 2TB and DvrBARS is trying to read past the end of the disk.

If you can make a Full backup of the 500GB drive and put it in a shared Dropbox folder I can take a look. If nothing else I can make a virtual 2TB drive and use VMWare and MFS Live to restore it to the VHD.

If you just want a 2TB 652 image in case your drive ever dies I already have one courtesy of lessd. There are also several MFS Live and WinMFS images floating around taken from the original 160GB drive.

If you want to save all of your settings & season passes, the easiest thing to do is to pop the 2TB drive out of the TiVo again and use DvrBARS to make a truncated backup. It should only take a few minutes.

If you used MFS Live to make a truncated image to the 500GB drive, it still has pointers to the full 2TB and DvrBARS is trying to read past the end of the disk.

Which may explain why the created file did have some data (934 KB). Any chance that would work as is, or is it just corrupted?

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If you want to save all of your settings & season passes, the easiest thing to do is to pop the 2TB drive out of the TiVo again and use DvrBARS to make a truncated backup. It should only take a few minutes.

I guess that makes the most sense, but I had some problems trying to image that 2TB drive initially. Unfortunately, the original 160GB drive was not available (I think he threw it out).

There's a chance it would work as is, but there are so many variables at play that it's hard to be sure. I take a slightly slower but safer approach to writing the VHD file by rewriting the header & footer after each block, so it should be a valid file that you could mount in Windows 7 Disk Manager. Whether it includes enough of the MFS file system for your TiVo to deal with is anyone's guess.

When it comes to Modified or Truncated backups, I had to start off with the assumption that the source drive(s) were intact and would boot up in a TiVo and run fine. There's some forgiveness built in for cases like the MFS superheader, which has an backup copy in case the primary is damaged, but most of the time it will just puke on the floor if there's anything serious wrong.

Give DvrBARS a shot at that 2TB drive. In backup mode it can't possibly hurt it, and hopefully it will get an image that you can trust.

Edit: I just looked, and the 2TB truncated 652 image from lessd is 953MB, so 934KB probably won't cut it.

I tried the upgrades with the WinMFS for the last week and didn't have much luck. Tried DvrBARS last night and this morning with a new WD drive and it still gets stuck and the original drive gets stuck on the powering up.

I am afraid to pull another hard drive from another tivo hd unit i have and have it do the same thing.

Does anyone have an image for these 2tb wd20eurs drives i can use with either the winmfs or the DvrBArs tools?

The worst part is the unit I tried to do is for my kids and has all of the kids shows and recordings on it.

Another day and I might go nuts with all of the comments from the wife about screwing it up....

When it comes to Modified or Truncated backups, I had to start off with the assumption that the source drive(s) were intact and would boot up in a TiVo and run fine.

I just swap drives for this deck. I placed the imaged 500GB drive (that I was trying to use for DvrBARS) in the 652 and it booted fine.

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just looked, and the 2TB truncated 652 image from lessd is 953MB, so 934KB probably won't cut it.

I was just going to ask just how large these vhd files are suppose to be.
Assuming there are no recordings, is there a file size difference if imaged from different sized drives from the same model deck?

I just swap drives for this deck. I placed the imaged 500GB drive (that I was trying to use for DvrBARS) in the 652 and it booted fine.

It will probably work until the TiVo tries to save video in an area of the drive that it thinks it is there but does not exist. When a drive is expanded, the extra partitions are recognized as an "external drive" by the TiVo.

Go into the menu to see if you can divorce the "extra" drive. I have not tried that myself as I usually delete the extra partitions manually then boot the drive in the TiVo and it automatically asks me if I want to divorce the drive.

__________________
"Delay is preferable to error" - Thomas Jefferson
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" - Sir Isaac Newton

I tried the upgrades with the WinMFS for the last week and didn't have much luck. Tried DvrBARS last night and this morning with a new WD drive and it still gets stuck and the original drive gets stuck on the powering up.

I am afraid to pull another hard drive from another tivo hd unit i have and have it do the same thing.

Does anyone have an image for these 2tb wd20eurs drives i can use with either the winmfs or the DvrBArs tools?

The worst part is the unit I tried to do is for my kids and has all of the kids shows and recordings on it.

Another day and I might go nuts with all of the comments from the wife about screwing it up....

If this doesn't work, is anyone in Chicago that can do the drives?

If I was to guess, your block 0 is corrupted. That is what happened to another member. Was able to fix it and all the shows were recovered. You might try Fixboot in WinMFS to see if it will help. If not, then it depends on how comfortable you are with low level hex editing a drive or copy and pasting hex images to fix it and possibly saving the recordings.

__________________
"Delay is preferable to error" - Thomas Jefferson
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" - Sir Isaac Newton

It will probably work until the TiVo tries to save video in an area of the drive that it thinks it is there but does not exist. When a drive is expanded, the extra partitions are recognized as an "external drive" by the TiVo.

I just connected it to see if it booted Ok and it did. I'm confused regarding this expanded issue. What extra partitions? If the original drive is 2TB and it was imaged using MFSLive down to a 500GB drive, how can there be extra partitions?

What I don't understand why the size of the drive should matter, isn't the concept to copy the O/S and any other related data so the recorder boots off of the drive assuming programs are not copied if there are any? Can't the system manage a different size drive by itself?

BTW, I used the program again with the 2TB drive and in less than two minutes it created a 1,071,000 KB vhd image.

I'm confused here. What extra partitions? If the original drive is 2TB and it was imaged using MFSLive to a 500GB drive, how can there be extra partitions?

BTW, I used the program again with the 2TB drive and in less than two minutes it created a 1,071,000 KB vhd image.

The original drive in a 652 was probably 160gb. The drive was expanded to 2TB thereby creating another partition or two (depending on the method of expansion) in order to accomplish this. When you copied the first 500GB of the 2Tb drive to the 500GB drive, the partition table remained the same and only a portion of the expansion partition was copied as well.

If what I think is correct, if you boot that 500GB drive in your 652 and the go to system information to see how many hours you can record on it, it will probably give you about 300 hours which is about 2TB drive size.

__________________
"Delay is preferable to error" - Thomas Jefferson
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" - Sir Isaac Newton

Ok, but how is it when you image a M$ O/S from a larger drive and copy to a smaller drive, then use that, everything is fine (as fine as it can be with M$)?
If I wanted to use a smaller drive, how can that happen? Or is all of this a limitation of this program?

This 2TB drive was what was in the deck when I got it. I didn't do a thing.

Assuming there are no recordings, is there a file size difference if imaged from different sized drives from the same model deck?

Truncated backups from the same model should be about the same size no matter what the actual drive size is. If both Root partitions have a valid copy of the OS, skipping the alternate Root partition will usually save a few hundred MB.

Ok, but how is it when you image a M$ O/S from a larger drive and copy to a smaller drive, then use that, everything is fine (as fine as it can be with M$)?
If I wanted to use a smaller drive, how can that happen? Or is all of this a limitation of this program?

This 2TB drive was what was in the deck when I got it. I didn't do a thing.

Tools like Acronis or EaseUs can shrink a Windows drive (within limits) by partitioning it correctly and then copying every file individually. DvrBARS may get to that level in the future, but it's no where near it yet.

Ok, but how is it when you image a M$ O/S from a larger drive and copy to a smaller drive, then use that, everything is fine (as fine as it can be with M$)?
If I wanted to use a smaller drive, how can that happen? Or is all of this a limitation of this program?

This 2TB drive was what was in the deck when I got it. I didn't do a thing.

How are you imaging the M$ OS. The ability to copy to a smaller drive and have it work might be built into the program you are using to do the imaging. I doubt it is just a mirror image of the first x number of gigabytes of a drive to make it smaller.

The 652 units do not come natively from Tivo with a 2tb drive so somebody expanded it before you got it.

At this point, as far as I know, you cannot shrink a TiVo drive smaller than the size of the original drive it was expanded off of. Someday there might be a way but not at this time. You can shrink it back to its original size and the re-expand.

__________________
"Delay is preferable to error" - Thomas Jefferson
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" - Sir Isaac Newton

I tried the upgrades with the WinMFS for the last week and didn't have much luck. Tried DvrBARS last night and this morning with a new WD drive and it still gets stuck and the original drive gets stuck on the powering up.

I am afraid to pull another hard drive from another tivo hd unit i have and have it do the same thing.

Does anyone have an image for these 2tb wd20eurs drives i can use with either the winmfs or the DvrBArs tools?

The worst part is the unit I tried to do is for my kids and has all of the kids shows and recordings on it.

Another day and I might go nuts with all of the comments from the wife about screwing it up....

If this doesn't work, is anyone in Chicago that can do the drives?

I sent you a link to a 2TB 652 image. It will wipe the entire drive, but it should get you running again. I would try jmbach's suggestion to use the bootfix tool in WinMFS first so the kids don't hate you.

How are you imaging the M$ OS. The ability to copy to a smaller drive and have it work might be built into the program you are using to do the imaging. I doubt it is just a mirror image of the first x number of gigabytes of a drive to make it smaller.

True Image.

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The 652 units do not come natively from Tivo with a 2tb drive so somebody expanded it before you got it.

Yes, it was used as I stated. I believe he bought the drive from one of those two outfits the prepares drives for specific TiVo's.

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Tools like Acronis or EaseUs can shrink a Windows drive (within limits) by partitioning it correctly and then copying every file individually. DvrBARS may get to that level in the future, but it's no where near it yet.

Ok. I surely didn't mean anything negative about your program, I'm just trying to understand how & why things are the way they are here.

This 1GB sized file, I assume it is because I had 75 deleted programs and another 7 not watched on this drive even though these recordings were not copied to that file?

This 1GB sized file, I assume it is because I had 75 deleted programs and another 7 not watched on this drive even though these recordings were not copied to that file?

If you did a truncated backup, all of the recordings including the deleted shows and the unwatched ones would have been excluded. If you run it again and exclude the alternate Root partition it will probably drop down to about 750MB, but that seems to be about the minimum size for a 652.

If you zip the VHD file it will probably compress another 30-40% for long term storage.

I include the Welcome video, the store demo video, and the THX video (on XL models) in a truncated backup if they still exist. There are probably a few other things I could exclude and make an image that would still boot up like the /var partition, but my first instinct after almost 30 years in IT is "back it up". As long as it will fit on a DVD or a $10 flash drive I'm happy. What's a gig or two among friends?

I sent you a link to a 2TB 652 image. It will wipe the entire drive, but it should get you running again. I would try jmbach's suggestion to use the bootfix tool in WinMFS first so the kids don't hate you.